The architectural hash mansion of eccentric Mona Bell Hill was razed for the Bonneville Dam: Historic home series

In 1935, living alone in a log cabin on the shore of a remote lake in northern Minnesota, Mona Bell Hill amazed a neighbor by shooting a dozen clothes pins off a line at 25 yards, firing revolvers from both hands in rapid succession.

“You tell the boys there’s a woman back here who knows how to shoot and will shoot,” she said, calmly.

More about Mona Bell Hill and her mansion

A free presentation titled “Woman Alone: Mona Bell, Sam Hill, and the Mansion on Bonneville Rock” will be given by John Harrison, writer, author and information officer at the Northwest Power and Conservation Council from 6 to 8 p.m. on March 18 at [venue changed from Historic Deepwood Estate, 1116 Mission Street SE, Salem to] the board room at The Grand Hotel, 201 Liberty St. SE. Call 503-363-1825 or visit HistoricDeepwood Estate.com for more information.

Harrison will also talk about Mona Bell Hill’s hilltop mansion that was condemned to make way for the construction of Bonneville Dam at 7 p.m. on April 26 at the Hood River Library, 502 W State St., Hood River. Call 541-386-2535 or visit www.hoodriver. plinkit.org/ for more information.

He did.

Mona had a reputation as eccentric, aggressive, frugal and friendly to a point. Her few neighbors sensed she was a woman with a past, perhaps a notorious past, but no one pried.

In fact, her reclusive life in Minnesota was a stark contrast to her earlier life in Oregon, where she had a brief, public role in Pacific Northwest history battling the federal government after the Army commandeered her hilltop mansion and surrounding riverfront acreage in the Columbia River Gorge to build Bonneville Dam.

Mona’s impressive home 40 miles east of Portland was built in 1928, apparently as a gift from her lover, the flamboyant, philanthropic, visionary entrepreneur Sam Hill, whose lasting works include the Maryhill Museum of Art and the Columbia River Highway.

That same year, in August, their child, a boy, was born in Portland. Two months later, Sam sold the home and 34 acres to Mona Bell Hill for $1. She had acquired her last name, Hill, through a brief marriage to Sam’s cousin, Edgar, which is another story altogether.

For several years, Mona and her son, whom she named Sam, lived an idyllic life on her hilltop. Then, with cruel speed, her world imploded in 1931 when the elder Sam became ill, was hospitalized in Portland and died, all within a few weeks. Mona tried to see him in his room at St. Vincent’s Hospital but was turned away by his family.

Suddenly more alone than ever and with her young son to care for, she survived by working odd jobs. She was a correspondent for The Oregonian and also a circus performer – she was a dead shot. She also had income from a trust fund Sam created for her and her son.

In early 1934, the War Department condemned the mansion she loved to make way for the great dam. There was no question Mona would lose her home and acres, the only question was how much the government would pay. Mona considered the government’s offer – $25,600 – an insult and demanded $100,000, about $1 million today.

For 15 months through two trials Mona fought in U.S. District Court in Portland with two of Sam’s longtime friends at her side, Jay Bowerman, a former Oregon governor, as her attorney, and then-current governor Julius Meyer as a witness.

While she won three times more than the government offered, she never outgrew the pain of losing both the man and the place she loved in quick succession. When she finally was evicted, in July 1935, she moved to the cabin in Minnesota, which she had inherited from her parents. She never returned to the Columbia River Gorge.

The Army remodeled the home into a duplex as part of its housing for engineers at the dam, then transferred ownership to the state of Oregon in 1945. The state rented the home for a few years, but stopped in the early 1950s.

The windows were boarded over and the home was abandoned. Children from the Bonneville housing project below the hill considered the house haunted.

Today, all that remains is part of an exterior wall and the foundation of the massive chimney. The house was bulldozed in the fall of 1960 when Interstate 84 was constructed through the area.

What a pity, really.

This remarkable structure and property, which Governor Meier testified in 1935 “has a little bit over mine” – he meant Menucha, 18 miles to the west – sat atop a heavily timbered promontory that rises about 200 feet above the river. The winding drive to the house from the Columbia River Highway was bordered by spirea, myrtle and pink locust and culminated in a circle around a large fish pond.

Mona also planted tree peonies, a special hybrid rhododendron that came from India, and flowering shrubbery that Sam brought from Japan. To this day, rhododendrons bloom on the hilltop in the spring, surrounded by overgrown arbor vitae. In all, the property was dramatic and ideally situated for stunning views.

No official record of the construction, such as a building permit, survives, but Mona was issued a water permit in June 1928. It is less clear who designed the house, which had 20 rooms but was a kind of architectural hash according to several prominent, modern-day architectural historians in Portland who reviewed the few remaining photos of the house.

One of them, Henry C. Kunowski of Historical Research Associates, Inc., opined in 2008, “It does not appear that the house was designed by the hand of a notable architect or designer.”

Ouch.

Perhaps Mona had a role in designing the structure, ordering up a design that pleased her. She enjoyed the unusual, traveled frequently and made her home a sort of museum for objects she acquired on her trips. She bought comfortable furniture and expensive fixtures, including lamps by the Rembrandt company.

Before and after Sam died, Mona entertained frequently. Her guests included the wealthy Adolph and Alma Spreckels of San Francisco. Later, Alma donated some of her art, including sculptures by Auguste Rodin, to Maryhill Museum, which she help found.

Alma also took one, and probably two, of the few remaining photographs of Mona’s mansion. On the back of one of the three-by-five-inch, black-and-white photos is an inscription in Alma’s trademark large handwriting in purple ink: “Mona Bell’s house at Bonneville damn.”

The photo is undated, but the inscription makes it clear that by the time it was taken, probably in the spring of 1934, the fate of Mona’s lovely mansion had been sealed.